You’ve just shot a great photo on your iPhone. Before you upload it to Insta, it needs a little tweaking. You edit it to your satisfaction in the Photos app but as you save it, you see an error message that means you have to cancel. Annoying, right? That’s an issue that’s popping up for some iPhone users. Here’s what we know.
Apple iPhone 16 Pro.
iOS 18 Bug
This problem seems to be down to a bug which is affecting iPhone users since they have upgraded to iOS 18, according to user reports seen by MacRumors. It’s believed that the problem is ongoing, but appears to be infrequent so far, though this could change and it could affect the millions of iPhones on iOS 18.
It seems that “a lot of the complaints about the problem have been from users who have an iPhone 16 model, but it also appears to be impacting some older iPhones as well… and it seems to be impacting every version of iOS 18 to date,” MacRumors says.
Reports started surfacing in September, when iOS 18 was released
Editing Photos
The issue is entirely connected to editing images in the Photos app—other photo editing apps are available. It’s not clear if there’s a particular part of the editing process which triggers the problem and it only becomes apparent when the user goes to save the edit. At this point, they see a message which reads, “There was an error saving this photo. Please try again later.”
Such a message doesn’t reveal what’s causing the problem. The advice to try again later suggests a potential connectivity issue, as though the iPhone can’t connect to the iCloud Photos server. However, some users report that all photos from a particular day are impacted, which could mean the problem came at the time of shooting or saving the original photo.
The Workaround
There seems also to be a potential connection to Live Photos. “There is no complete fix, but duplicating a broken image with a ‘still photo’ allows the edits to be saved, but it removes Live Photo and Photographic Styles,” the report says. Not ideal, then, but possibly enough to allow you to upload something to social media for now.
When Will It Be Fixed
According to MacRumors, Apple is aware of the issue and is working on a fix. More as we have it.
